


Fire Walk

by Sholio



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Demons, Curse Breaking, Curses, Deal with a Devil, Gen, Oaths & Vows, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 19:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19707550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Ozai makes a deal, but he's not the one who will bear the cost of it.





	Fire Walk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minium/gifts).



The palace had once been as familiar to Iroh as the palms of his own hands. Now, as he stormed down the halls in search of his brother, he found himself losing his way more than once. All these great, echoing chambers looked alike to him now. He was more used to standing on the deck of the ship, or on a battlefield in a foreign land, than being enclosed by towering basalt walls.

But then, his hands were no longer as familiar to him as they'd once been, either: hands that were more used to killing than to holding children, hands that could channel lightning, hands that had touched dragon scales.

By the time he finally slammed open the right door, he'd worked himself beyond a towering, spark-spitting rage into a cold calm.

"I know what you did," he told Ozai, and he saw his brother pause for the most infinitesimal of moments, before sending the servants out of the room.

"You knew it would be like this," Ozai said. "We have a war to win. That boy --"

"That boy is your son!" Sparks danced off the tips of his fingers, despite himself. _His_ son was buried in the Earth Kingdom. And Ozai, blessed with two living children, did _this_ to one of them.

"That boy is the hope of our people," Ozai corrected him calmly. "He was never going to be worthy to inherit the throne. He would have been no good at ruling. Nor is he any use at taking orders, nor has he skill at firebending at a level that befits his rank. What is left? This way, he can serve us better than he ever would have otherwise."

"You gave your son to a fire demon." Iroh spat the words at his brother. 

"I made a bargain that will win us this war."

"And cost you your son."

"It was a worthy sacrifice."

"It was not _your_ sacrifice," Iroh said, and left the room before he did something rash, something stupid -- such as challenge his brother for the throne he'd long since disavowed.

He had done many things in the service of his kingdom, his people, and his Firelord that he had come to regret. After a lifetime spent at war, he had wished for nothing more than a quiet retirement and a little tea shop in some remote corner of the empire, to live out his days and try to put the war behind him. Now he found himself confronted with one more battle, and it was one he did not plan to lose.

*

Zuko burned.

He writhed in an inferno filled with pain and nightmares, and in that endless misery, the only relief came in the form of a cool hand cupped under his neck, lifting his head and tilting strange-tasting teas down his parched throat.

He woke, at last, clearheaded but weak, and lay for a long while before he tentatively tried sitting up. His entire body ached, and at first he thought it was his own dazed senses that made it seem as if the floor was moving under him. He had to bend over and place a hand on the floor to recognize that it was moving on its own. He was on a ship.

He rose shakily, drank from the cup of water that had been left beside the bed, ignored the cooling cup of tea. There was a robe beside the bed in Fire Nation colors, and before donning it he stood for a moment and looked down at the shiny pink scars on his arm and hand and side. He touched his face and felt bandages over his eye, and more tender, healing flesh on his neck and the side of his face.

Taking slow breaths, he dressed, and went up top.

Fresh sea air greeted him, along with a profound sense of disorientation. Being surrounded by all this water felt ... wrong. Something in him recoiled from the salt spray at the railing. He pressed back against the ship's cabin. The air itself seemed wrong, moist and water-laden. It hurt to breathe.

"Zuko!"

Iroh had been deep in conversation with two sailors near the railing; now he came quickly, caught Zuko's hands, and pulled him to sit on a bench against the ship's cabin. "You should not be up," he said, kneeling in front of him and looking up at him with a deeply worried expression that Zuko didn't know how to interpret.

He yanked his hands free. "Where are we?" he demanded.

"I'd say about a day's sail off the coast of Whaletail Island, at the moment --"

"Let me rephrase that. _Why_ are we here?"

"Because I had to get you out of the palace," Iroh said quietly, searching Zuko's face with his calm gaze as if he was looking for something specific.

" _Why?"_

"Zuko," Iroh began, and hesitated. "What do you remember?"

_Black and red, shadow and fire, a shape rising out of lava to drag me down --_

"Nothing," Zuko said, and he hated the way his voice trembled.

*

Iroh took him below, made him sit on the bed, and brought him a bowl of rice and a cup of tea.

"I've had enough of your tea," Zuko muttered.

"You need this. Drink."

He took a sip and winced. "What is _in_ this? Have you entirely forgotten how to brew tea, Uncle?"

"It's not regular tea," Iroh said. He sat on the rug, crosslegged. "Drink. You need it."

There was a peculiar urgency in his voice, different from Uncle's usual urgency about drinking tea. Zuko sipped, shuddering at the sharply astringent taste.

"So what's in it?" he asked, laying the bowl aside. "It's medicinal, I can tell that much."

"Herbs to kill pain and fever," Iroh said. "And binding herbs. It is a tea to keep the beast at bay."

A shudder swept through Zuko, starting at his core and working its way outward. He would like to say he had no idea what his uncle was talking about -- but it was there in the half-remembered horror of his dreams.

"Father," he began, and stopped. He couldn't go on. He took a slow, deep breath. "Father ... said it would be an honor. That it would be for ... the good of our people."

"Your father thinks so, yes."

Zuko looked down at his hands: the shiny scars on the one, the unblemished skin on the other. They were shaking. He clasped one over the other. "What is going to happen to me?" he asked, very quietly.

"I will not let it have you," Iroh said, just as calmly as ever, but there was steel underneath. "As far as anyone on this ship is concerned, we are traveling in search of the Avatar. What we truly seek is a way to undo the ritual that bound the fire-demon to your soul." 

"I -- should not," Zuko said very quietly, speaking to his hands, not to his uncle. "Father -- I mean, the Firelord wanted --"

"What your father wanted is immaterial!"

Zuko looked up, startled. In all his thirteen years, he'd never heard his uncle raise his voice.

"He had no right," Iroh went on. "No right. What your father _wanted_ was for your soul to burn to ash, leaving you an empty vessel for a monster. This will not happen. I think keeping you on the ship, away from land, will help. And we will seek the advice of sages both within and without the Fire Nation. We will seek advice from ..." He hesitated. "... from someone far off, who I met long ago, who may know what to do."

All this seemed to flow past Zuko like the water under the ship. He was dizzy again, starting to tremble, and he could feel the fever coming back. But he also felt cold, a bone-deep chill, as if he could never again be warm enough.

 _Fire, boy,_ a voice inside him seemed to say. _What you want is fire. Immolate yourself. Give yourself to me._

"-- listening to me, Zuko?"

He opened his eyes and found his uncle holding his hands again, gazing at him intently. "... yes?" Zuko managed.

"You must not bend fire until we find a better way to control this. Do you understand? Every time you do, the demon will become stronger. And ..." Iroh looked down at Zuko's hands, and in particular, at the hand he was holding with great care so as not to press on the healing burn scars on its back. "... more of this will happen. Your body cannot withstand it."

"All right." It was easier to agree than to argue. His teeth were chattering. _The tea,_ he thought, _it's something in the tea ..._

"Lie down," Iroh said quietly. His hands were gentle, helping Zuko back to bed. No one had done that for him since ... since Mother, perhaps.

And maybe it was that part of him -- that long-ago child -- that made him whisper through chattering teeth, "I'm afraid, Uncle."

"I know," Iroh murmured. His hand gripped Zuko's shoulder. "Rest, nephew. I will be here, and we will find a way to defeat this. On my honor, and yours, and the honor that was once your father's, I swear it."


End file.
